84 
THE I LLUS7RATED BOOK OF POULTRY. 
curved to the proper horizontal position. A graduated dial, as employed by M. Martin, is 
also highly useful, since different-sized fowls, or birds at different stages, will require different 
quantities of food. 
For many markets, and for home use always, cooping up is not at all essential to fattening. 
Chickens or fowls reared at liberty and in good health, will lay on weight rapidly, and make 
splendid birds, if simply confined five or six together in a shed floored with clean sand, and 
fed three times daily with as much soft food as they will eat. The first meal must be given 
at daylight, and the last at nearly dusk, and they must be kept warm and sheltered. If they 
are kept waiting for food in the morning they fret, and the feeding of the day before is practically 
neutralised. Birds will often add one-third of their weight if taken off their runs and fattened 
for a fortnight merely in this natural way. 
Closely connected with the subject of fattening is the operation of caponising, or depriving 
the cockerels of the power of reproduction, so largely carried on in France, but comparatively 
little practised in this country. There is no doubt that the weight of the birds and delicacy of the 
flesh are enormously increased by it ; and on the ground of cruelty there is little to be said whilst 
all our oxen and most of our sheep are prepared for the butcher in a similar way. Considerable 
ignorance prevails on the subject in England as to the practical value of the operation ; and even 
Mr. Tegetmeier,* after quoting a description of the process from the same French work from which 
we take our own, adds that “ the operation of making capons and poulardes is attended with 
considerable danger. The advantages gained are slight in comparison with the risk of losing the 
bird, and with the positive amount of unnecessary pain inflicted on the animal. We would 
therefore by no means recommend its adoption.” On the contrary, the usual mortality in France 
amongst the birds thus treated is only about one in forty, and the danger is thought so little of 
that the operation is frequently committed to mere children. In Italy, also, capons are largely 
prepared for market ; and even in China the process has been extensively adopted. That it is 
not so in England is simply owing to the neglect of poultry generally in a commercial point 
of view. 
The French operation is best described in the work already referred to by Mdlle. Millet- 
Robinet. The time chosen is about the age of four months, and when the weather is rather 
cool and moist ; in the heat of summer it is attended with danger, and is rarely performed. 
The instruments are two — a small curved knife, kept, very sharp, and a curved surgical needle, 
with some waxed thread. Two persons are required, one of whom operates while the other holds 
the bird. 
The operator sits down, and the assistant holds the bird on his lap, with its back towards him, 
and the right side downwards ; the lowermost leg being held firmly along the body, and the left 
leg being drawn backwards towards the tail, so as to expose the left flank, where the incision is 
made. A few feathers being plucked off to expose the skin, the latter is raised up with the needle 
so as to avoid the intestines, and an incision large enough to admit the finger easily is made into 
the abdominal cavity, just at the posterior edge of the last rib ; in fact the knife is kept close 
to the edge of the bone as a guide. Should any portion of the bowels protrude through the wound 
they must be gently returned. The forefinger is then introduced, and passed behind the intestines 
towards the spine, on each side of which the two testicles are situated, being in a young bird of 
four months rather larger than a horse-bean. One of the testicles being felt, it is to be gently 
torn by the finger away from its attachments to the spine, and removed through the wound, the 
• “ Poultry Book,” p. 96. 
